Azerbaijan, Baku, 14 June/ Trend D.Khatinoglu/
Iran's third attempt to sell furnace fuel oil cargo was a success on international oil bourse at Kish Island on Tuesday after two unsuccessful trading sessions failed due to price disagreements.
The Iranian Oil Bourse establishing euro and dirham (ADE) based pricing of oil opened on February 2008. Iran inaugurated the new phase of oil bourse with vast opportunities for foreign companies in 2010.
The Kish Bourse has traded oil-derived products until Iran included cruel oil and fuel oil on OIB product selling list.
IOB officially launched selling oil on June 1.
Three major oil markets - WTI, NYMEX, IPE - are trading oil in US dollars worldwide.
The Iranian oil bourse could sell oil batch in the third attempt thanks to agreement of a seller - the Bandar Abbas Oil Refining Company (BAORCO) - to reduce prices.
Ahmadinejad's government cut most energy subsides in December 2010, but is still a failure to sell at the independent energy market prices.
Iran can sell its oil on the domestic market, because the government subsidizes the stuff and of course, most companies and industries would want that subsidized product. There are also better networks for selling Iranian crude internally than those externally, Professor of Economics at the U.S. National Defense University and Georgetown University Paul Sullivan said in an interview with Trend.
On the other hand, Iran stresses on raising oil prices on international markets, naming it as "fair and real".
According to Sullivan, "the Iranians are pushing too hard on prices and there are alternatives to their oil varieties.
"The recent OPEC meeting also points out something else ," Sullivan said. "The Iranians are not looking at the long run, when it comes to the effects on oil markets of very high prices. They seem to be scratching out every penny" .
The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) held a meeting last week with oil ministers of 12 member-states, but was unable to come to an agreement on raising its production limit to keep high oil price under control. Some members, including Saudia Arabia and Kuwait, believe that they should increase production rate because of decrease in Libya's oil production by 1.3 million barrels per day and rising demands in Asia. However, Iran and Venezuela were not positive to this proposal.
Iranian Parliament adopted the budget on an average crude oil price of $81.5 a barrel last month. Still some MPs believe that Iranian government would confront budget deficit if the oil price fall down $100 per barrel.
Sullivan believes that Iran's attempt to keep uprising oil price "is a clear signal that the Iranians are in some financial difficulty; even though, they are loath to admit it and most of their macroeconomic data are phony anyway".
"There is also a lot of international pressure, and not just from the west, for some customers to get their oil elsewhere, " said American expert Sullivan.
T.Konyayeva contributed to the article.